


A Little Piece Of You In My Heart

by lameafpun



Series: something about heartache [2]
Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gender-neutral Reader, M/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27652277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lameafpun/pseuds/lameafpun
Summary: It’s a little sliver of doubt in the end, just a few more seconds of hesitation, and you can't muster the feeling to do anything but watch the magic in the medallion sputter out.(Or: If their last minute courage had faltered and decided against going back to the castle)
Relationships: Howl Pendragon/Reader
Series: something about heartache [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2022430
Comments: 2
Kudos: 74





	A Little Piece Of You In My Heart

_Summoning a ball of light to your palm, you let it flicker for a few seconds, the pleasant crackling of the fire distracting you, before you focused it onto the tip of your finger and pressed it to the middle of the flame._

_Walking was overrated anyway, health be damned._

_Besides, Howl owed you one._

You let the thought linger. You’d dreamt about it often enough. Of visiting the castle, of seeing the place you had left so abruptly however many days ago. In your mind it ends sweetly, surrounded by people you love and a hug so tight you can feel your ribs creak. It ends with fanfare and confetti and forgiveness.

Reality was always harsher.

Before your eyes the light dimmed. Without a steady stream of magic it doesn’t last more than a minute. It dies as you watch, clenching the splintering medallion in your hand and regretting your wishfulness. Or foolishness. You’d heard it both ways.

With a shaky sigh, you tuck the medallion carefully back into your pack with the resolve to fix it later. Maybe give it a new coat of varnish as well.

Soft flames crackle in the camp fire. They flicker and dance, draw you into the embers, drown out your thoughts, and your dreams are burnt out from the inside by inferno.

(In a town leagues away there is a man in a bar, at a party he wasn’t invited to, talking to a woman he won’t remember who may as well not be wearing her own skin. She speaks and all he can hear the way it isn’t her own. His thoughts linger despite the haziness, but by the time they’ve stumbled through the doorway of his home he’s forgotten. He loses himself.

After she leaves he counts another morning, and the cavity in his chest where his heart used to be aches.

In a castle, a boy who is growing up tucks a multicolored feather into his desk and waits.)

oOoOoOoOo

Running away from everything works less well when the whole world explodes all at once, blown apart by a war you’re not entirely sure matters. The lives it takes matters, the land it destroys matters, the families it tears apart matter, but as the days pass by you’re not entirely sure the thing itself - the cause - matters as much as what it’s taken away (it’s already taken away too much).

Even as you board a large metal leviathan of an airship, you’re not sure that it matters.

A man in a uniform greets you, bowing slightly at the waist. Memories of your etiquette lessons are dusty but you can just barely recognize the depth of the bow - it is at just the degree to be respectful, and not an inch lower.

“The Lieutenant is waiting for you.”

He turns on his heel and you follow as he marches down the hall. Each step echoes. There’s no one else moving through the halls you can see. Even as the uniformed man guides you through twists and turns and stairways, through a route you forget as soon as you take the next step, no one else crosses your path. It’s strangely lonely. That the man seems content to let the silence lay doesn’t help.

You reach the door of the meeting room. It’s larger than you expect it to be and it doesn’t help that, besides you and your guide, there’s only two other people filling the space. The statuesque man you recognize, you expect. The other less so, and you don’t bother to try and modify the heights to which your eyebrows rise.

“Sir.” Your guide salutes the Lieutenant and promptly leaves.

“It’s good to see you.” The other occupant — your mentor, Adelaide, in the same red plaid cardigan — greets you warmly, eyes crinkling. The pain in that look doesn’t pass you by. Your arms itch to hug her. Professionalism forces you to settle for a warm smile.

“Yes, quite, now to get down to more urgent matters.” The Lieutenant’s brusque manner takes charge. “Our current maps of Ingary. The coastal cities closer to the border are less accurate because of some magical rot. Our troops need to have full knowledge of the terrain, and orders that take advantage of that.”

You settle into one of their uncomfortable metal chairs next to your mentor, fixing your eyes on the map in the middle of the table as the Admiral points to various points with an extendable pointer. Underneath the table, you twine your fingers with Adelaide’s wrinkled ones. You try to focus on the warmth you’ve missed for years rather than the sinking feeling that you’ve made a mistake.

“I’d never expect to see you somewhere like this.” With the meeting ended and your orders given, you’d offered your arm to Adelaide to escort her to her room. Restless energy had made you fidgety. Conversations and questions you’d saved up over the years had bubbled to the forefront of your mind and then - that statement - had popped them. You didn’t want to think about it.

“Where?” You laugh. It’s not a happy sound. “On a great, big, dumb, poorly decorated ship?”

Adelaide doesn’t let you distract her. She never has. “In the middle of a war, on the opposite side of - “

“Yes, well,” You cut her off, mouth twisting. “War can make life more unpredictable than it usually is.”

She nods slowly. “It can.”

The words hang in the air as you continue to move throughout the ship. Each turn was meaningless. Every hallway looks the same and you anticipate many instances of you getting lost in the depressingly gray labyrinth.

“Is that it?”

Adelaide snorts. “Well, I could say what I think but last time I tried to do that you stuck your fingers in your ears and sang ‘My Cauldron Toads’ so loudly it left my ears ringing. And here I thought I’d taught you better. Did you never listen in my voice lessons?”

“I’m surprised my singing wasn’t worse. Weren’t you also half deaf at the time because of that dust explosion?”

“I was. Which makes the fact that even I could still tell you were an octave off . . . concerning.”

Your mock pout drew a laugh out of her, and the ship doesn’t seem so cold. Instead it feels familiar, and you’re back to being an apprentice.

“So, why are you here?”

Adelaide’s laugh dies. You glance at her from the corners of your eyes. Her lips are drawn into a grim line, all the time she’d aged away from you carving its way across her face. She’s tired, slumped, smaller than you remember, the theatricality of her presence she’d honed all those years ago hollow. The same kinds of stress lines your face, maturity you’d never asked for. “Is there ever a good reason?”

“If you were here to stop it.” You shrug as she looks at you. “I’m not. You know me. I came here - well. You said it yourself. There’s never a good reason but we’re here anyway.”

You still don’t know where you are, but you can hear the engines of the ship. A literal machine of war.

“Gods, I can’t believe I forgot how much like me you are.” Adelaide whispers, and sounds so proud and ashamed at the same time — of you? Of herself?

Do you want to know?

You choke out a laugh and pump a fist in the air. “All hail Highland.”

Adelaide mimics you, and in the minds of you both is the knowledge that you have willingly offered yourselves to this conflict. There is no way out that you can see. You’re not even sure Adelaide plans to try and even as you attempt to hide how much that terrifies you, you can’t stop the shaking in your hands long after you’d finally found the canteen. It’s just as sterile as the rest of the place.

It isn’t even noon. You want to sleep.

Of course, that’s when a shadow falls over the table you had taken for yourself. You glance up and make eye contact with another man in uniform. This one, though, has a mustache.

“Your laboratory and connected quarters have been prepared.”

You thank him, and then thank him again when he drops you off at your new laboratory after you get your jaw off the ground. They’d supplied you with a scrying table that looks vaguely like a bird bath (if not for the runes on the side) and an extensive map that took over a whole wall, yes, but they’d also seen fit to put in a wall to wall bookshelves. Tomes, treatises, and almanacs on anything you could need or want filled the shelves. Along with the desk and the extensive wooden cubbies that took up the opposite wall — it was the most put together, expansive, _expensive_ place you’d ever have the pleasure of working in. You could almost forget what it cost as you rummaged through the cubbies, running your fingertips over precious stones and packets of herbs you’d only ever seen in books.

A familiar spark of magic, striped a wondrous red and gold, flickered through the air. The packet of dried flowers fell back into its labeled cubby.

“No time like the present.” You mutter, gesturing to the scrying table. The shallow pool of water ripples readily as you gather your magic, the ends of your hair sparking as you _pull_ an image to the forefront of the waters. Even that isn’t as intensive as it usually is with the help of the enchantments they’d engraved into the stone. You still end up gripping the edges of the table as the image clears.

A skyward battlefield sounds like one of those things that should be devastatingly artistic — like a poisonous frog or a venomous plant with a beauty that belied the cruel danger hiding just beneath the surface. It would be the subject of a painting, or a mural across the ceiling of a grand old building, commissioned by someone dazzled by glory and stories of battle told over bubbly drinks. You can already see it. Clouds of smoke frame the ships, great big bodies in the sky that lay across the air like gods. It is gaudy and clean and glorious. It is not what you see in the water. Instead, it’s almost impossible to tell whether it was the sun shining or explosions that lit the smoke choked sky. Your horrified fascination was deadened, though. What drew your attention was a familiar blue feathered form cutting through the air, bobbing and weaving through canon fire.

“How - “ You choke as the waters change, responding to your subconscious direction, and robin egg eyes peer through the water.

They sharpen almost instantly, darting in your direction, holding your gaze without missing a step in the death defying dance. His lips move. The spell hadn’t been tailored to transmit sound. If it had - if you had been given orders to surveil the territory, you would’ve been able to hear his voice. At the thought, there’s a strange dip and swoop in your stomach. Your eyes can’t - don’t leave his mouth.

Even without sound you know what he’s saying. You know that shape of his lips intimately. In your weakest moments you’ve given in and traced the movements, you’ve seen it in your dreams paired with the bitter relief of absolution. He’s practically close enough to touch. All you’d have to do is reach out.

The sound of water splattering against the floor is oddly loud in your ears. Against the rim of the wide water bowl, your knuckles are white. Saliva collects in your mouth and you’re suddenly faced with the startling realization that there is a non-zero chance of vomiting.

“Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.” You try to swallow back the bile. And succeed, thankfully. With the tears you are less successful, and the sleeves of your uniform darken.

The canteen is quiet. Whether that’s because it’s early morning or the dead of the night you don’t know. The lack of windows means you have no idea how long you’ve been sitting on the bench staring at your food when Adelaide shuffles onto the bench across from you. You tuck away your sleeves.

“What do they have you doing?”

“Air currents.” Her grip on her utensils failed and they clattered onto her dish as her hands shook lightly.

You swirl your spoon through your own bowl of murky brown soup, watching as the sudden movements kick up bubbles in the steaming broth. The taste of bile still lingered in your mouth. “That it?”

“Scrying?” She steadied her hands. Her eyes were still tired and the slump to her shoulders made her small. You don’t want to know what you look like. Your face feels raw.

“Ah. My magic?”

“Everywhere. Living in the wild made you reckless.” Even her scolding was subdued, raspy. “I can’t believe such a careless person was my apprentice.”

“I mean, technically I never finished so I still am.“

“Technically you left at the drop of a hat because some fop batted his eyelashes at you.” It’s a shadow of her old anger. You lean back on the bench, lips pulled into a line. It washes over you, the sting faded.

The regret in her eyes helps soothe the part that still hurts. “They were very pretty eyelashes.”

Her sigh is long-suffering. “Oh yes, I know. You kept me well informed.”

Despite yourself you laugh. It’s strung out and reedy and hesitant, but genuine.

oOoOoOoOo

Accident is a funny word, and you find yourself thinking about it a lot during your assignments. Accident, accidental, accidentally — there’s a lot of ways to say it, a lot of ways to convey the feeling of “you fucked up” with the full power of human language, and yet you’re not sure if there’s a way to succinctly describe somehow digging your own grave, looking down at the loose dirt beneath your feet, and then continuing to dig. It’s probably one of those long words you find while flipping through a thesaurus, one of those words people only use for a laugh. By itself, though, “accident” isn’t very funny. Neither is looking into the shallow scrying waters, at the sickeningly familiar picture, and realizing you’ve really stepped in it. You’ve done the accident thing and can’t just laugh and move on. Not when it stares you in the face wherever you go, when you can feel it burrow beneath your skin. It’s on the tail end of every thought you have. Everything just comes back to him.

Disgust is a worm in your stomach as the waters clear, revealing another battlefield full of airship fleets featuring a navy blue blur. He coasts on the air currents and the tension you can feel even through the waters. Control slips through your fingers. The picture shimmers, replacing the great big blue sky with a smaller, dearer blue. Your mouth dries as they focus on you again. You’re sure, down to your bones, that you’d wrapped away the traces of your scrying. How - ?

His gaze skates over your shoulder, carrying with it a weight that you breathe easier without. So. It works. Just not very well.

You tell yourself it’s better than nothing, that you can finally get on with writing down troop movements and airship types and other military related things. You know, your job. The picture before you doesn’t shimmer, doesn’t change. He stops trying to peer behind the water and dives. His hair — which is blond now, you note — whips across his face as he drops through the air like a shining star. As he drops the tension snaps and if he’s a shining star then the sky is a vast celestial body, collapsing in on itself and imploding. It’s a backdrop of destruction as smaller units dive after him.

“Go.” You find yourself chanting under your breath, hands clamped on the rim of the table in a death grip. “Go, go, go.”

The sky is his for the moment. It’s obvious as he executes spins, tumbles, and rolls that make your head spin and allow him to eke out an escape from the swarm behind him. You get a glimpse of the horde over his shoulder, at the eyes with no light in them but hunger.

“Go - “

There’s a claw with just the right reach. It clips his wing and he pulls them to his sides as he tries to balance himself out in a roll. Your heart is in your throat as he nears an airship, skimming over it so close he could reach out and touch it if he wanted to, rocketing up the sides and toward the clouds. A section of white fluff parts, swallowing him, and the swarm bursts through seconds later. The table strains to show two different scenes even for a brief moment before the runes spark with the strain. It’s him again, gliding through the air. You’d say he looked relaxed if not for the heaving of his chest. Again, he finds you and you can only muster a tired sort of acceptance at that. His lips move but you’re pulling away from the table before you can even think to decipher the shapes, rubbing at the stiffness in your neck.

This, you tell yourself, is the last time that will happen. From now on you’ll pay attention to your orders and do what you need to do. You’ll scry and spy and stop giving in to your impulsivity.

You tell this to yourself all the way through the following week, a mantra that weakens and splinters into something meaningless under repetition.

You’re standing in front of the table again. The clock above the door says that it’s two in the morning.

Wherever Howl is, it’s that late too. He’s asleep when the image clears, covered up to his chin with a blue and purple patterned sheet and surrounded by a collection of charms and knickknacks he’d only gotten halfway through explaining to you before you’d left.

You tense as he sighs in his sleep, frozen by indecision. Howl never would have been so careless as to leave the castle vulnerable to scrying, so why - ?

The sheets rustle as he turns in his sleep, eyes moving beneath his lids, and you pull at the image. Markl is reading a book by magelight. Calcifer, you suspect, is crackling away in his hearth. You’re more than sure he can feel your presence but, unlike Howl, he can speak through to you regardless of the designs of the spell thanks to the his natural magic. It’s a piece of knowledge that makes your stomach churn.

A distant metal clang from the depths of the ship spurs you to hurriedly pull apart the spell.

It doesn’t stop you from pulling up an image of him, perhaps more often than you should. Just to check.

Conversation dries gradually. Pulled apart by your responsibilities and fatigue, you and Adelaide spend your free time sitting together in silence. These moments become fewer and fewer in between as the days go by, as the stalemate continues and the pressure mounts.

“Earlier . . . did,” you swallow, “You knew?”

Adelaide is hardly recognizable. Her hair has grown thinner, her skin sallow without the sun. You haven’t looked into a mirror in a while.

“He _was_ Sulliman’s apprentice.”

“Technically, he didn’t finish either.”

“Ah yes, I remember that conversation with her. Some ‘unambitious pseudo-mage who couldn’t charm their way out of a bucket’ had charmed him out from under her.”

You nearly snort your drink. “Is that really what she said?”

She nods and takes a sip of her herbal tea.

“Huh. I thought it would have been worse.”

“Yes, well, I very nearly hexed her.”

You can’t stop from inhaling your still warm tea this time, and it burns. “You - Madam Sulliman? Was she Madam Sulliman at the time?”

“She was.”

“How were you not executed?” You coughed. Whatever herbs are in the brew are intense - it feels like you've shoved a flower shop up your nose.

“Oh, Sulliman and I had very different philosophies and I have no doubt she tried to levy what power she had to get rid of me but, please,” Adelaide scoffs. “Give me some credit.”

You think Howl gets used to you — your magic, your presence over his shoulder as he dive bombs his way into danger on a daily basis. He glances your way when the waters clear, is nearly always the first thing you see. It’s a little like a dream. You’re even left with a crick in your neck afterward. It takes you back to your real apprentice days, when you’d had to study at all hours to keep up and falling asleep at his side on one of his uncomfortable couches after exams.

And, after, you get up and leave, content to leave everything you’ve felt in that room to dissolve back into the water.

It feels like you only come out of your quarters, drag yourself away from the scrying table, at night when no one else is around. Though the same could be said for your mentor. You don’t think you see her anywhere except in the canteen.

Speaking of Adelaide, you catch her silhouette in the corner of your eyes as she shuffles in. She moves like her bones are delicate, maneuvers onto the bench like it hurts.

“Yeah, Adelaide?” You settle in for another late night conversation.

She peers at you from across the table with cloudy eyes, tapping the surface restlessly.

“I never did finish your graduation ceremony.”

In hindsight, that really should have been an obvious hint.

And then —

And then . . .

You’re standing in a field in the middle of nowhere with nothing but your pack and a red plaid cardigan wrapped around your shoulders. Sunlight bathes you as the scent and sound of nature drift to the forefront of your mind. You have to close your eyes for a few seconds to take a few breaths. Even the air is more vibrant, sweeter on your tongue.

“Hey Howl.”

The sound of rustling grass halts, though the magic in the air is still just as staticky. 

When you open your eyes again it feels like waking up from a long slumber.

He looks different. Among other things, you can spot slight bags beneath his eyes and a few flecks of ink on his cheek. Half of his shirt is untucked from his pants. He’s rumpled. None of it seems as important as the shape of his mouth, as your name leaves his mouth and something in your chest slots back in place. 

You think it’s shock that keeps you from saying anything but are proven wrong a few seconds later when your legs fail and you collapse to the ground and realize that, no, it was lightheadedness. Your palms get scraped on the pebbles as you try to catch yourself. Between one blink and the next, Howl is by your side with an outreached hand to steady you. The bags underneath his eyes look a little worse up close. Your focus on them wavers as he leans closer to inspect you. Old books and ink and a strangely charming mix of perfume — so that hadn’t changed. You wonder if it’s the familiarity that makes your chest hurt.

He’s still leaning closer and your thoughts stutter.

“Are you ok?” You want to rub his weariness away, but your hands are still balancing you and probably caked in dust. And initiating feels dangerous.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” He has no such compunctions and his touch as he swipes away a smudge on your cheek is gentle. It feels like nostalgia. If it wasn’t for all the unspoken things laying between you it’d be like a return to form, but you can’t bring yourself to pop the bubble.

You scoff and hope he doesn’t notice the hitch in it. “Oh please, you know good and well I’ve taken worse falls than this.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t worry.” Unspoken things and sincerity shine in his robin egg eyes and the warmth of the palm on your cheek aches.

It takes you a few seconds to realize you let the silence linger.

“I mean,” You stammer as his thumb brushes against your cheek again, “you could try not worrying. Just put me out of your mind.”

“I did.” Somewhere between those two words your heart stops and shame at the selfishness surges through you not long after. “Try. It didn’t work very well.”

“Yeah.” You breathe out. “Didn’t work for me either.”

“So it was you watching me.” A smile brightens his face.

The first bubble pops and you slump lightly. His palm is still flush against your cheek. Sludge could move faster than your thoughts at the moment and before good sense can catch up you’ve laid your hand over his.

He doesn’t even flinch at the dirt. His eyes are fixed on you as you sway, as your eyes slip closed for a second before you pinch your thigh. 

“Don’t pretend you didn’t know.”

You can feel the movement of a shrug through his hand before your cheek is left to the cold. Without the balance you nearly pitch to the side, but then his side is there pressing against you. “I suspected.”

And —

Stars twinkle above when you open your eyes. The breeze is cold on your cheeks but your side is warm. Out of the corner of your eyes you spot a pink and white sweater sleeve. On the other side of you is your pack. Howl must have taken it off before setting you down.

“Sorry.”

No response. The threads of tension in your shoulders unspool.

“What for?”

Nevermind. You blow a raspberry into the night air in a decidedly unsuccessful attempt to relax. “Everything, really. I don’t know, being around you makes me a little stupid and I somehow end up doing stupid things that blow up in my face — every time, too.”

Cloth rustles. His gaze bores into the side of your face.

“Not that it’s your fault. I’m plenty stupid all by myself.” You add belatedly.

“Markl would have something to say about that.”

You snort. “He hasn’t been witness to as many of my stupid moments as you have.”

“Wouldn’t that be inevitable if I bring out the stupid in you?” His tone was light but his words - you don’t like them. They reach to the bottom of your stomach and pull.

“Howl,” You tug the cardigan a little tighter around your shoulders. Honesty comes a little easier when the words are jumbled together by fatigue but no amount of questionable lucidity can rid you of that slightly sick churning in your stomach. “You bring out the coward in me.”

The last word drops off your lips into silence. Forcefully, you turn your focus away from the hitch in Howl’s breathing and to other, just as pretty sounds that make the night swell around you. Things like the chirp of crickets. The occasional hoot of an owl or bat chitters join the nightly orchestra. It reminds you of a half forgotten night a forever ago, before you’d gone through life like you were walking through a dream, when you’d tucked that medallion back into your pack.

“Which, you know, in hindsight sounds dumb. Too much of a coward to talk to you properly but going to war? Not on the front lines, but still.” You hum. “My mentor was there, too. She called you a fop.”

That shocks a low laugh out of him and you smile at the sound.

“And she revealed what Sulliman called me all those years ago. Apparently she thought I couldn’t charm my way out of a sauce pan or something. Which is somewhat disappointing, I was expecting something with more zing —”

Your heartbeat quickens; you’re losing control of your mouth and the amalgamation of hopefully funny nonsense you use to cover up the squishy undesirables that nearly trip off your tongue is exactly what you don’t want. You’re tired. Of yourself, your tendencies, and the fact that you still can’t force those words past your lips. 

“When you left the castle,” Howl starts slowly, shakily, like he can’t quite believe he’s saying it. “I didn’t know you’d be gone so long. Then a month passed and I couldn’t get the number out of my mind. I think I drove Calcifer a little mad.” He lets out a subdued little huff of a laugh. “Couldn’t help it. I missed you.”

The admittance has barely settled in the air before you’re speaking and reaching out to squeeze his hand. “I missed you, too. It hurt the entire time. I thought it would hurt less if I stayed away but it just made it more difficult to come back when I’d realized I couldn’t stop wanting to be with you.”

Something inside you is screaming at that but you couldn’t make your legs carry you away if you tried.

“I just - I could never say it.”

Nothing in your life could ever hope to be as sobering as the stillness that swallows you ( _your heart is in your hand, between your palm and his — please_ ).

He squeezes your hand, lifts it shakily, presses a kiss to your knuckles.

“Neither could I."


End file.
